Bhopal: Even one year after the of Bhopal Jailbreak, in which eight SIMI activists had managed to escape, the Bhopal Central Jail is still to come under CISF security cover, the demands which is pending for long with the Union government.
All attempts of the State authorities to get Central Industrial Security Force security for the Central Jail have fallen flat as the Union government is till to take any decision on it. The Union ministry of Home affairs had junked State government’s first proposal, while they are sitting on the second one seeking central agency security for the prison.
Earlier in January 2017, the jail department had sent a proposal to the Central government seeking a security masters at Bhopal Central Jail and had expressed their preference for Indo Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), as it already forms an important part of security at Delhi’s Tihar Jail. But the proposal was dropped by the MHA for unknown reasons. Thereafter, state government had sent a fresh proposal suggesting CISF as a security master, sources in jail department told Free Press.
The jail department wants a three-layer security system for the jail and finds CISF as the best option. “The request of the state government for CISF security is pending with MHA and we hope to we get CISF company soon for our central jail in Bhopal,” said DG Jail Sanjay Chaudhary.
The CISF team though has already done detailed survey, determining and finalising the accommodation and other requirements in the jail. Six months have passed, but the security of Bhopal central jail still remains in hands of the jail department guards and state police’s SAF under whose nose the jailbreak had happened last year. There is immediate need to upgrade and tighten the security in the jail that houses dreaded criminals including 40 undertrial and convicted SIMI men, undertrial ISIS suspect trio, men part of an ISI-guided espionage ring and two Pakistani Hindus arrested recently for being part of Hawala racket.
On the intervening night of October 30-31, 2016 eight members of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) facing trial in various terror cases had escaped from one of the two high-security blocks after killing jail warder Ramashankar Yadav.A few hours later, on November 1, morning all the jail-breakers were gunned down by state police in an alleged encounter on outskirts of Bhopal.After the jailbreak, the jail department got a special security audit of the Bhopal Central Jail done by the CISF. The higher-ups at the jail department are keeping their finger crossed and hope that the proposal may finally be cleared and a CISF company takes over the command of the central jail’s security, after the conclusion of assembly polls in Gujarat.
